It seems I will focus a lot on gender and its conceptions on this blog.

But what I want to talk about today is how much my mother influenced me. I have a macy’s credit card, when I swore I’d never have one, and part of it is nostalgia and missing my mother.

Another part of it is dedication to one’s cooking. I was making mashed potatoes today, and I was using a large, potentially wrong, knife to cut the potatoes into smaller chunks. The potatoes were fresh, and I was having a bit of a problem cutting them. I began angling them against my hand, which I have done many times before, and is dangerous, but I have never had a problem. And I sliced my middle finger on my left hand. It immediately started bleeding and the cut was fairly deep. What did I do?

I put the rest of that potato in the pot. Then I went and ran my finger under cold water. I rolled up some toilet paper and put pressure on the wound. Then I returned to the kitchen and resumed cutting the potatoes, albeit more carefully. Once I finished, I went back to the bathroom, disinfected with bactine, and put a bandage on.

So, it is clear that mashed potatoes take priority over my physical well being. My mother also prioritized finishing tasks. She wanted to help people - she was feeding my father and myself. Today I was cooking alone. My roommate is with his family in Kansas City. I miss him.

By the way, the mashed potatoes turned out lovely.

Oh, wow. In firefox, this dashboard on wordpress has many more options and html choices than it does in safari.

I’m at Jay’s house, we’re making costumes. He’s fixing his surger.

I tend to have really strong reactions to things and I am wondering whether this is a good or bad thing. Like, when I get excited, I tend to go overboard in what I do, and lose focus. Similarly, when I don’t like something, I tend to have reactions that range from mildly annoyed to just plain angry, and I lash out in my reactions. I often have to stop myself from making snap judgements so that I don’t have to backtrack.

Now, i’ve always prided myself on my passion, so I am very ambivalent about this problem. I’m passionate, I give my all to something I am interested in, and it can end up hurting me. I don’t want that to happen. So I am wondering how to make sure I am making good decisions while not diluting myself; I rarely regret, but when I do, it is often these rash statements.

I was busy downloading things this evening. I was also taxing my computer quite a bit. Downstream was about 300 kps, and upstream was 72 kps. I’d had a 24 day uptime, and I had quite a few applications running. Eventually my computer stopped having it, and I needed to reboot. While it was rebooting, I went to do the dishes.

I don’t mind doing dishes. As long as they aren’t disgusting, or moldy, it’s a pretty relaxing activity.

and I feel terribly guilty for that. I’ve always prided myself on independance. However, of late I have discovered myself wandering slowly past Crate and Barrel, drooling at dishes whose color can only be described as burgundy. I find myself coveting silverware, oggling bowls, and hoping fervently for unusually cut knives and forks in my cutlery drawer. Am I a bad feminist?

Now, it’s not that I devalue the home arts. Except wait, I do. It’s unpaid, it’s ‘woman’s work,’ it’s stigmatized and its hard labor. Yet I find myself loving it when my house is clean.

On other hand, if I were to say that I made a bookshelf and am proud of how it looks in my living room, that would be seen as accomplished, almost manly. Why is making an accomplishment and arranging a weakness. They both describe a sense of ownership of one’s home and surroundings. The underlying sexism that divides different tasks around the home makes me feel guilty for wanting a nice house. After all, why would such an empowered woman be concerned with such things as housekeeping.

The home is the image we present to the world of our intimate selves. Those who choose not to make their home nice are either very busy or very powerful, as those who are neither and live in a state of disarray find people wary to visit them. But intimacy has always been seen as a woman’s realm, and that is partially why the inside of the home has been devalued.

I don’t want to feel guilty for wanting nice dishes, but I do. and I have to learn to deal with the fact that when I have a free five minutes, I might want to do a dish. and that’s okay, because it’s a nice way to live, no matter what society says.

I’ve been steadily losing my voice since last week. On saturday, I think, I initially got sick, and it has not gotten better. Instead, I have yo-yoed from okay to terrible and back to okay and then to worse. This morning, when I got up, I could not make any sound come out of my throat.

“Fantastic,” I thought, and proceeded to call out sick from work. I mean, what am I going to do, replenish all day?

Part of the reason I have been so sick is that I haven’t been getting any sleep. I’ve been consumed by all matters of thoughts before I go to bed. First is my overall resistance to actually turning my ipod off and going to bed. This resulted in my losing on the last level of Zuma twice last night, which was highly dissapointing. Also, I need more ipod games. But I digress. The night before last, I was up thinking about feminism and abstinence only education. I was thinking of the ani difranco lyric “they keep pounding their fists on reality, hoping it will break.” Which is true, so damn true. These people, who live everywhere, are not living in the same world we are. And I mean, I know republicans. I know people who vote for issues I abhor, and we still get along? Why?

Because they are not religious conservatives. And while I may think very little of people who vote so selfishly (voting for conservatives because of tax benefits and ignoring the social issues the same MOCs espouse), they are not bad people because of it. They do not judge my lack of religion, my sexuality, my beliefs. It’s a different animal.

On the other hand, the people who are just full of hate and bile, often in the name of religion, who think that anything on this planet at all is unnatural, who want to kill and maim, they do not realize that they are really against themeselves. All those articles about anti-choice women getting abortions. All those people, benefiting from policies they view as immoral. They have to open their eyes and realize that this is the world we live in, and we have to make the most good from what we have.

“how terrible it must have been, to be taken at her word.” -paraphrase from The Handmaid’s Tale

So yeah, I haven’t been sleeping because of feminism, and because i’m tired, and because… Because it’s a perpetuating cycle.

I hope this post isn’t too incoherent.

I’ve never blogged before. I have been a livejournal user for six years. But I am going to give this a try because I will look professional and cool. Or something.